Mr. Speaker, what we are debating is not simply a matter of dealing with waste and mismanagement. It is a matter of trust. It is a matter of character. It is a matter of doing the right thing.
I remember asking a question last week that made me think about this issue of character. It is not just the character of the current government; it is the character of each and every member here. It is to deal with the issue that, when people do something, they must be accountable.
I once defined accountability this way. People are accountable when they explain and/or justify their actions or decisions in a manner that is truthful, plain, clear, concise and correct. In simple terms, it says they tell the truth even if they have taken a decision to break a promise, a decision they believe is the best thing, in the best public interest. They explain it, disclose it, do not hide it, do not cover it but put it out on the table.
One member was talking about a $56-billion projected deficit for the current fiscal year, which ends March 31, and we have a five-year budget that is going to almost balance by that time. However, the budget speech and the throne speech said that we will not balance the books on the backs of pensioners or by raising taxes. The Minister of Finance rose in this place and said those words.
However, accountability has to kick in, because we know that the people who purchased income trusts to emulate a pension plan, to get that annual cashflow, all of a sudden were hurt very badly.
We also have a case where we are increasing the tax on income trusts by 31.5% effective January 1, 2011. We are increasing employment insurance premiums by 9% in the first year and up to 15¢ each year thereafter for the employee and 21¢ for the employer. It is something like $13 billion of taxes.
What do the government members say? Employment insurance is not a tax. That is a service. That is to get EI benefit.
The government is also increasing the traveller's tax. We have the income trust tax, the EI tax, the traveller's tax, and I am sure there are a few more.
I think it is prima facie that the government was not accountable to Canadians and to Parliament when it said it would not be raising taxes to balance the budget. It absolutely is; $13 billion of additional EI premiums is balancing the books. It is going right down there. It is going to take care of moneys that otherwise the government would have to transfer into the new corporation to deal with the rising EI benefits because unemployment in the next year is going up from 8.2% to 8.5%. Those EI premiums are going to cost another 200,000 jobs in Canada.
We are going to have this problem where 500,000 people currently on EI are going to have their benefits lapsing. They are going to run out of benefits.
What will happen next is that we are going to have rising health care costs because of the stress on people not knowing how they are going to pay the bills.
We are also going to have a demand on social programs because people will need to turn somewhere. We will also have a rise in property crime and violent crime in Canada.
That is exactly what happened a little more than 10 years ago when we had the last recession. The crime rate in Canada tracked perfectly with the unemployment rate.
We have an aging society. We have consequences of that. We have mental health problems. The list goes on. These are significant priorities, and yet the House is now wondering whether or not we should deal with $10 million on ten-percenters and a few things to do with advertising, more discretionary things.
Why do we not take that first step of saying we have priorities that are important in this country? We have priorities in which we need to sacrifice things that we do.
I heard the Minister of State for Democratic Reform say ten percenters are democracy. I disagree because ten percenters, these flyers that get sent out by members of Parliament from all parties, are Parliament's money, money from the taxpayers. They produce these documents but claim that when they cross the line and are no longer just information on the important work of Parliament, they become political flyers. They become pieces of political literature. They ask, “Which leader do you support?” They ask, “Will you give us your email? Will you contribute money?” Political parties have ways to raise money to pay for these things. Why have we allowed a good tool to become jaundiced and become a political tool? Why have we done that? This is straightforward. There is not a member in this place who does not understand that, and there is no point in getting up and arguing about it in any other way.
We have made a mistake. We have not controlled this. The motion before us says let us fix it. Let us try to do the right thing. Let us be accountable. Let us be honest. Does anybody in this place really have a problem with that?
I do not have to get up here and berate the government for things it has done or a former government did. That is not the point. The point here now is that we, the members of this place, collectively have an opportunity to show Canadians that we are accountable and that when we have the opportunity, we will make good laws and wise decisions and be prudent with taxpayers' money. That is what is being asked right now. The motion will go to the Board of Internal Economy with the recommendation that we should do this.
I want to suggest that there are a couple of other areas that I really think the House will be dealing with: one would be the issue of prorogation. I do not think I have to explain to members how much prorogation costs Parliament in terms of its operations. It happened twice. We do know it happened when the government decided that, rather than be accountable to Parliament at a time when there were urgent issues, it would prorogue to try to cool it off, whether it be the fall of the government on a confidence vote or whether it be releasing the Afghan detainee documents.
While I am mentioning that, I notice the terms of reference of Mr. Iacobucci. I have some concern about spending the money on former Justice Iacobucci. He is a private citizen. He works for Torys LLP. He makes a lot of money. He used to make $400,000 a year as a supreme court justice. Now he is making easily more than twice that by doing his work for Torys.
The terms of reference are here, and this is in terms of accountability. I would say that by the terms of reference of this, his fees will be $500 to $650 an hour. If we work out the math, it is about $1 million a year. There is no term on this, but I can say that with the terms of reference that have been laid out here, it will unquestionably be a situation where Parliament will be sitting waiting for a response for about a year. It is going to the government. It is not going to Parliament. I do not know what that Afghan committee will do.
On top of that are all the consultants and experts he needs, all of the travel expenses while he is in travel mode and all of the other attendant things, plus other areas. We do know from inquiries in the past that these things become very expensive. I am estimating that the Iacobucci inquiry will hire an outside lawyer to do the work that the Department of Justice, which has some of the best lawyers in the country, can already do.
Why is it that we will hang up Parliament from doing a job on an important issue about whether or not Canada, directly, indirectly or inadvertently, may have violated the Geneva Convention? It is not unimportant. It is very important. Equally important to me is that the authority of Parliament to have that information to make those determinations is being challenged, not only by the government, but also by the Department of Justice.
These are issues that are important to our country. Our character is in question on these matters. We need to defend ourselves, and the only way is to get the answers clearly. If there are contradictions in the information and if there is a problem, we need to address it quickly, not wait for a year until Justice Iacobucci finishes.
Respectfully, I do not think, as a private citizen, Justice Iacobucci even has the authority, unless he gets sworn in somehow, not to disclose it, but everybody else that he has contact with, whether it is at his legal firm or all of the experts he gets, all of a sudden this information is going out into a lot of people's hands, but not to parliamentarians, and there is something fundamentally wrong about that.
I want to conclude with one other area that is very important to me and it has to do directly with spending of money. It has to do with access to information. I chair the access to information, privacy and ethics committee and we constantly get bombarded with complaints about the government's failure to deliver responses to people within the 30 days as required. In fact, many of them are coming from people who have been waiting two and three years.
The access to information commissioner does report cards on selected areas and departments. Last year there were eight reports, six of them had failing grades and one was red-flagged. The worst offenders were the Prime Minister's Office and the Privy Council Office. The Privy Council Office budget has gone up substantially because employees have been instructed to vet virtually every access to information request to ensure there is no political damage. No wonder the costs of the PCO have gone up so greatly. It is because we have political control in the PCO which is there to advise the Prime Minister's Office in terms of governance, not to be a political mask.
The motion before us brings some interesting issues for us, a small number, but they represent the bigger picture and that is each and every time that we do something, no matter which party, whether it is government or opposition, we must have due diligence, be accountable and tell the truth.
